Originally Posted by
Scoop
Gloopy,
Great Post. The company was "hoping" for a different interpretation of 117. Well we know how that goes, "hope" is not a strategy, hell it ain't even a tactic.
The one thing that I think some are missing is that some Pilots are saying even with 19 hours for long call they are not required to acknowledge until 3 hours of report. While this is our contractual obligation it is a means to an end - the means to not be on a short leash on long call. And besides 3 hours does not work with 117.
Is this our (Pilots) problem - No it is the companies problem, but if anyone thinks we (DALPA) will win a grievance when a pilot is given 19 hours notice for long call and waits until 3 hours prior to acknowledge they are crazy. Before 117 we had a 9 hour window which was applied via the "NLT 3 hours to report" verbiage.
It is quite reasonable to replace the "NLT 3 hours until report" verbiage with "within 9 hours."
Now before I am tar and feathered I think SDs memo was total BS. Management fiat does not cut it - we have an agreed to contract. If they want to change it they better start bargaining, but until then the company will have to suck it up and assign long call trips further out - too bad they should have planned better. They will need to carry more reserves because they will need to rely more heavily on short-calls and even green-slips. Short notice IAs in my opinion will no longer be legal. The company wants 117 to be neutral manning wise - well apparently it may require us to hire more Pilots.
I still think, and hope, the union and the company will come to an agreement and in my opinion the agreement should benefit the Pilot group with a longer long-call leash.
Scoop
Scoop,
If as you said, a grievance filed for the scenario you painted would not stand much of a chance of being successful, what's a union or pilot to do? SD has made the company's position clear, and you can pretty much count on getting a call from the CPO as well as getting a PD put on your schedule as a result if you use the contract in a way you're free to do.
My take (tell me where I'm wrong):
So pilot A doesn't acknowledge a trip until 3+30 before sign in and gets a PD put on his schedule--doesn't get paid. How many pilots are going to do this? My guess is not many. DALPAs not going to pay pilots who decide to do it the anti-SD way; there's no point after a day or two when others are falling in line. The company will come down on those who use the PWA to its fullest and pilots will fall in line. Unless DALPA were to make as strong a drive for getting all reserve pilots to wait until 3hr plus > 1 min to acknowledge as they had to get us to vote yes for the TA, there's not going to be enough pressure on the company to come to the table on this issue.
It would appear that the company played hardball on this and won't suffer much. They will probably want to clean this item up in the next round of negotiations and claim they're giving something in return, but in reality you know they're not or they would have given it now. Maybe after a couple of weeks they'll give DALPA a little something after they show them it wasn't all that big of a deal (since we didn't put up much of a fight).
I think the company looked at the data and saw that most pilots acknowledge trips pretty early on. My category typically got them out about 14-15 hours before sign in.